As 2016 gave way to 2017, a turkey moved into the left turn lane of a major intersection in my hometown. Some say he arrived in January of this year; others are sure he was around in late 2016. But regardless, once he was there, he was there to stay. The turkey’s constant presence in this busy spot made him a local celebrity, and the unlikely, or perhaps inevitable, epicenter of a community in which humanity’s best and worst instincts played out.

It was a woolly ride, but three wild rabbits managed to escape rising floodwaters in New Zealand by clambering aboard sheep and surfing to safety on their backs. Ferg Horne, a farmer from Mosgiel, New Zealand, captured an image of the sight after going to rescue a neighbour's sheep from the floodwaters.

Hummingbirds flap their wings about 50 times per second, so all we ever see is a blur around them as they zip around the yard. The folks from National Geographic mounted a high-speed camera on a hummingbird feeder to get some incredible footage of the tiny birds. Not only do we get to see them flap their wings, but also slip their tongues into the nectar up close!

Entitled, arrogant, lazy, spoiled, narcissistic. That's all we hear about young cats today. In the good old days, our cats were happy to hunt for mice and live in the barn. Now they expect to be fed organic freeze-dried turkey treats while they spend all day snapchatting, watching themselves on youtube, and doing things we generally consider to be a "waste of time".

When you lose your pet snake, all you have to do is put a heating pad out in the middle of an empty room - chances are Mr. Slithers be parked on top of it the next time you look. Apparently you can do the same for lost dogs, by frying up some sausages the last place you saw them.

Ed Annunziata, the creator of Sega’s Ecco the Dolphin series, once tweeted that while he himself has never taken LSD, he did draw inspiration from the work of neuroscientist John C. Lilly when conceptualizing his cosmic cetaceans. Back in the 1960s, Lilly ran a NASA-funded research unit where humans attempted to communicate with dolphins. Somewhere along the line, LSD got thrown into the mix, a researcher became sexually involved with a dolphin, and things generally got a bit weird.

Long-tailed macaques living near an Indonesian temple have figured out how to run a ransom racket on visiting tourists. The monkeys grab valuables, such as glasses, hats, cameras or, in one case, a wad of cash from the ticket booth, then wait for temple staff to offer them food before dropping their ill-gotten gains and dashing off with the tasty prize.

John Daniel was no ordinary gorilla. For starters, he was called John Daniel. And he had his own bedroom, drank tea and cider, and could purportedly do his own washing up. Villagers in Uley adopted the lowland gorilla after he was captured in Gabon by French.

The sparsely vegetated plains around Garub on the eastern fringe of the Namib Desert is no paradise. The land is barren, the climate dry and hot, and vegetation is few and sparse. Yet, over the decades, a group of a wild horses have managed to adapt to the harsh conditions and made the desert their home.

Numbering between 90 and 150, these wild horses are one of the most isolated horse populations in the world, and the only feral herd residing in Africa.

Unlike humans, animals rarely faint from surprise, panic attacks or any other strong emotional stress. But there is a breed of goat that appears to do so.

When startled, the so-called "fainting goat" collapses on its side. They fall over, often with legs comically raised towards the sky. After laying motionless on the ground for a few seconds, they recover and bounce back on their feet as quickly as they fell. This curious reaction to fright has made fainting goats the popular subject for many viral, and often humorous, internet videos.